Biology is a funny thing. Some people are allergic to some things and others aren’t. I have one friend who’s deathly allergic to bee stings but loves shellfish, another friend who’s deathly allergic to shellfish and has been stung a few times by bees.

Also some people reported being fine for the first few bars or even the first box or so. I didn’t feel super ill until the second box. Soylent powder 1.1 and 1.6 was like that as well for me.

I’ve gone through multiple boxes without issue so far. I just logged into my account to check: four orders of 24 bars each, so 96 bars total. I’ve still got about half a box on hand, so that’s about 90 eaten without issue.

That in and of itself may be worth reporting to RL. I’m thinking that knowing batch numbers that didn’t cause illness could be almost as helpful as batch numbers that did. Per individual I mean, if it’s an allergic reaction or some intolerance.

They read discourse, and as I said above, I didn’t record any of the earlier box batch numbers. I have had boxes marked both 1976 and 1966 with no issue. I assume most customers haven’t had issues, but I don’t think they’ve released any sales numbers so I’m guessing at how many bars they’ve sold (and/or given away; I saw someone on YouTube was given a box of Soylent products to try, including bars).

Assuming there are only the two batches (1966 and 1976), we’d be seeing widespread reports of illness (IMO). What we have seen is a few real issues (possibly but not definitively related to the bars), followed by a bunch of reports primarily from new, throwaway discourse accounts (which I don’t take seriously).

I don’t work for RL so I can’t say how many actual customers have reported issues, but let’s say there were a dozen reports of illness, spread across two batches with say 10,000 customers, or even across 1,000 customers. 12/1000 = 1.2%, 12/10000 = 0.12%. Unless we assume a silent majority of sick people, or hilariously bad sales numbers, it seems unlikely to be a product contamination issue. I would like to see a blog post regarding the reported issues, even if they determine there is nothing wrong with the bars, which is my assumption as this point.

The Coffiest problem has shown that they won’t hesitate to cease sales, so the fact that we can still buy bars bodes well. As far as I know, no one reported any Coffiest issues to RL, they discovered the error themselves. Making people violently ill is a more serious problem than low vitamin levels (IMO), and I think if they had found any real issues they wouldn’t be selling bars.

I would like to see a blog post regarding the reported issues, even if they determine there is nothing wrong with the bars, which is my assumption as this point.

Definitely agreed with you on that point. I always enjoy Soylent blog posts because it helps me understand their process behind the scenes better. It gives me more confidence in them as a company when they communicate.

Periods of silence are frustrating. I especially remember the days before they were shipping 1.0. Even if the blog posts were short, but indicated material progress towards solving the problem, I would feel a great sense of relief.

I’ve observed that Soylent tries very hard to have a solution in place before communicating about issues. Its understandable, given the nature of their business, that they wouldn’t want rumors or suspicions about quality to negatively affect sales.

Before I created this thread, I thought long and hard about whether to approach Soylent publicly, or in private. Ultimately I knew that if there were a legitimate QA issue, it would likely be resolved faster if more people were encouraged to come forward with their reports. I hope that ends up being the case.

I’ve had a similar negative physical reaction as several other posts in this thread, so I thought I’d add my experience to the mix.
I actually wound up in the hospital.

Info below is from the notes I took after the incident:

I had a bar for the first time the night of 9/13/2016:
I had a bar before going to a birthday party for a friend’s daughter. Started to feel somewhat nauseous during the party, and wound up throwing up once I got home, about 2-3 hours after consumption.

Had a bar for the second time the morning of 9/21/2016:
This is the one that sent me to the ER.
Thinking that the first incident must have been something I ate or drank at the party, I had a bar for breakfast with some Starbucks iced coffee on the way to work.
About 10 minutes after consumption i was feeling so bad I had to pull over to the side of the road to throw up. Thinking I had it out of my system, I started driving again and made it all of about 3 minutes before I had to pull over to retch again. After that, I pulled into a gas station, thinking to get some Gatorade to settle my stomach. Then I just started throwing up more and more violently. I started burning up and sweating profusly, and started getting very dizzy, lightheaded, and weak. I continued to throw up untill there was nothing to throw up, and then I just kept dry heaving for about half an hour. I’ve never vomited that much, that hard, or for that long ever in my life. After the vomiting FINALLY subsided, I was still sweating, dizzy, and lightheaded, and it wasn’t getting better. After about 45 minutes in this gas station parking lot, the attendant came out to check on me and convinced me to call 911 because I couldn’t even stand up to get out of the car, no less drive myself anywhere.

I was admitted to the emergency room with a blood pressure of 202/139 (For those that don’t know, that’s crazy high. Like dangerous, you could die, high) and spent the next 26 hours getting stuck in practically every machine they had there and having every bodily fluid possible sampled for testing, to try to determine the cause and to make sure I didn’t have a stroke/anurism from the dangerous blood pressure I came in with. (CT scan and MRI clear, btw. No brain damage. And, after they got me stabilized, my blood pressure went back to normal and stayed there. I’m 100% okay now, AFAIK)

On leaving the hospital, the ER doctors’ best guess as to cause was “acute food poisoning or stomach bug”.

So… three days of work missed (thank goodness for sick days) and Thor only knows how much in medical bills (thank goodness for health insurance!)

Code from the box:
B1-00CAR
BEST BY 1976 14JUL17 0716

Also, I had given a box to a friend to try before all this, and he reports that the bar he ate gave him a pretty upset stomach. The code from one of the bars in his box was:
11 : 34 B.B. 14JUL17 F3 1976

Other possibly relevant details:
•I am a 30 y/o male, with no medical history of related health problems
•My blood pressure is normally within or close to the normal healthy range; 125/76 was my last reading
•I had been drinking the Soylent 1.5 and 1.6 powders for several months now with no previous problems.
•I live in North Alabama, and it has been very hot this summer. That day was neither unusually hot nor cold, though. It’s possible the bars were exposed to the summer heat during delivery, though.
•I normally have a pretty strong stomach, and the few times I have thrown things up it is usually a one-and-done affair; I get it out of my system and I’m fine. This was like getting repeatedly punched in the gut while being ducktaped to a tilt-a-whirl after drinking two gallons of milk and a bottle of ipecac. Two days later my abdomen was still sore from all that violent dry-heaving into the gas station parking lot.

TLDR;
I’m a big fan of the concept of Soylent and their products, however, these bars seem to have a serious health problem that needs to be addressed pronto.

Don’t forget to mention to the FDA that no one on Twitter is mentioning this problem, so either it is very rare or Rosa Labs has found a way to control the opinions and perceptions of Twitter users, a scary thought.

Sample comment:

@orthelious: Office is full of free soylent food bars. I’m chain-eating soylent food bars. This is a new low.

Had a similar experience. Ate 6 bars with no issue. Ate 7th bar at work in the afternoon. When driving home a few hours later felt nauseous, which is unusual for me. Took son to cub scout meeting after work, felt worse. Vomited around 8pm that evening, which is very unusual for me. Probably has been 15 years+ since the last time that occurred. Ended up taking a sick day from work the next day, but no other episodes.

I thought I better add my similar experience to this discourse, just for the record. I have already emailed info@soylent.com and have gotten a very quick reply and refund for 2 boxes.

I felt nausea on two separate occasions after eating a Soylent bar. Same as everyone else, I ate a few bars from the first box I ordered way back when, and enjoyed them, though a little sweet for my taste. My kids were eating a lot of them, so I ordered two more boxes.

So the first time it happened to me – I felt kind of bad in a vague way right after finishing the bar, and then the nausea started about 2 hrs later and lasted half a day. A week later I decided to try another one and the exact same thing happened. I normally have a stomach like a rock, never get nauseous. The wrapper-melting thing is an interesting idea, because I remember that one of the bars was kind of deformed, kind of flat at one end. The thing is, my son has been eating from that same box and has not felt sick. Although now that I ask him, he thinks that he has felt a little nauseous sometimes. Who knows. But regardless, not nearly as much as me.

Unfortunately I threw out the empty box that I ate from, but I do have the next box which came in the same shipment. “B1-00CAR BEST BY 1966 14JUL17 0716”. And I’ve pulled out a bar from it which says “15:14 B.B. 14JUL17 F3 1966”

Maybe they just joined because this is the first time a RL product has made them ill?

I just realised I joined here because powder v1.1 make me sick and I mentioned it in the “This box is making me sick” thread back in Nov 2014! So much for my “throw away” account.

Everyone’s experience isn’t the same nor should it be expected to be. What works for one person may not work for another, so I’m not sure I understand your point of saying it’s not affecting you. Are you accusing those reporting illness of being dishonest?

It reminds me of a friend a month or so back, we were talking about the weather changing and I told him it was raining, he paused and said something like, “oh really? Clear skies here.” To which I reminded him, “You’re 400 miles away from me you know.” You don’t represent everyone.

It would be like me telling a good friend of mine every time I had a shrimp without issues even though I know he’s deathly allergic to shellfish and telling him, “I’m not sure about this allergy you claim to have, I mean I’ve never seen you die from it.”

@ BitBucket That’s the case for me. I’ve never had a issue with a soylent product before, so I’ve never bothered to sign up for the forums. I was getting a bit annoyed at the repeated implications that anyone who wasn’t a long time forum user must just be making up stories for some unspecified nefarious purpose, so thank you for calling that out.

BTW, in addition to my post above, I also emailed soylent with the same (and more) information through their “Report a problem with an order” feature on their website.

I wonder if it could be one of the ingredients that just isn’t compatable with some people’s biology.
I’m reminded of Haribo Sugar Free Gummy Bears (aka. “Devil Bears”). For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about see these links:

(EDIT: The forum software makes the below Amazon link look like an add, but it is the link I intended, to the reviews page for the Devil Bears)amazon.com

There has been lots of talk on the internet lately about Haribo sugarfree gummy bears and how they make you make shit like a madman. One staffer was skeptical, so we made him eat a bunch and report back to us. Here's what happened.

They are an internet-famous candy that causes, uhm… comedically horrible gastointestinal distress… in a sizable percentage of the people by whom they are eaten. Some people are completely unbothered by them, but the about 10% or so of people that are affected have a very bad time.

I believe that for the Devil Bears, the culprit is Lycasin, a sugar substitute used in the candy. I wonder if perhaps the Soylent food bars have a similar thing going on, just with a different chemical and effect.

Also, another thought: possibly the batches the bars where made from were not mixed evenly or something, such that some bars have a higher concentration of the mismixed chemical than others. That could explain why some bars from the same batch are fine and others are bad. A low probability, but still worth consideration at this point.

The Number 1 New Release on Amazon, and what’s the biggest complaint? “Too Sweet.” Amazon reviews are a pretty good indicator if there is something “wrong” with a product. For example, with the Haribo sugar free gummy candies, there are many reports of the death shits. Yet, the biggest complaints from Food Bar is its too sweet.